Mr. Incredible did the right thing at the beginning with Buddy, but he probably did not do it in the best way. He was busy, though, since he was catching a suicidal jumper, stopping a bank robbery and saving a passenger train and was late for his own wedding. He wasn't perfect, he paid a price for it, and he learned a lesson from it. It's all part of the story.
I think your comment mostly holds, but the Incredibles family is really not much (or really, any) more dysfunctional than any family today. A lot of what makes the show interesting and relatable is that, as a commenter above pointed out, the family members' powers are all based on real family stereotypes. They fight, they argue, they whine, they nag, they get bored and dissatisfied. The "dysfunction" is absolutely normal.
That said, The Incredibles is definitely in my top 3 Pixar movies, and a sequel would be much more natural than it would be for Monsters, Inc., or for Cars. Even if they skip the whole UnderMiner story line from the close of the first movie (or maybe especially if they skip it), they can build a very complex story about the continuing evolution of the family, with their roles in society and in their own home.
I actually disagree, to some extent. If you've seen the trailer for Toy Story 3 (admittedly I haven't seen it close up or on a big screen so I can't say much about the quality or level of detail), the style is very much the same as the previous two Toy Story movies, as it should be. Ratatouille had an incredibly beautiful style, but that was the Ratatouille style, and Toy Story shouldn't be done that way.
One of Pixar's greatest strengths is their ability to put you in a world and believe in that world. Doing Toy Story in the style of Ratatouille or Wall-E or Finding Nemo would break you out of the Toy Story world and would ruin the Toy Story experience. I can tell you right now my kids would much rather watch either of the Toy Story movies than Ratatouille... they're so much more relatable for children (and for me, actually, despite having lived in France for a couple of years). That's not to say that Ratatouille isn't a great movie though.
I have no doubt that Toy Story 3 will have higher-quality animation and artwork than the previous TS movies. That's expected, and it is pretty much a requirement. But if the difference changes the way you see the Toy Story world, then Pixar has failed to some degree... Unless TS3 takes place in a Parisian restaurant, of course.
Pixar will obviously come to the same conclusion. 3D (and real 3D) animation has just become just too expensive. Why? cause their employees think like IT: you need to constantly upgrade: cooler tools, faster computers, more editing, more realism, more challenges for the sake of keeping things fresh and innovative, like technology itself.
For one thing, the faster computers and the cooler tools can actually help the budget as they can cut development times down. For another thing, Pixar doesn't go always go for "more realism", at least not for the sake of realism, especially when human characters are in the picture. There were some scenes in Wall-E where it felt like you could have been looking at a photograph (mostly at the beginning), but when the humans got involved, they were all very cartoony, and intentionally so, because they were making a point and drawing a contrast between the first humans on the spaceship and what they had become.
Each of the Pixar movies has its own artistic style, and after the beautiful water scenes of Finding Nemo (which probably did cost a lot to make it as beautiful as it was), the Incredibles was very cartoony and the characters looked like action figures, instead of trying to make them look like real people. Ratatouille had a very realistic look, but with a charming, not really realistic glow that lifted the whole tone of the movie. Up had very cartoony characters, especially the main character. But the way they showed him grow up as a kid, a young man, middle aged, then elderly, you could see how he grew up into the little crotchety old scrunchy character he was, and you understood why he was lonely, and that he wasn't really the mean old man we could have otherwise mistaken him for.
Through all of it the artwork, especially the characters, was all a vital part of the story telling. The stories stand alone quite well, and they're mostly all very good stories. But the extra time and money was put into the artwork -- not to make shiny yet hollow experiences (as with most Disney releases of the past 10 years) -- but to enhance the tone of what are already very compelling stories.
Ratatouille was a good show with gorgeous animation and artwork, but I never really felt like it was that entertaining, especially for kids. There were no kids in the movie, and nothing that kids ever play with or dream about, which was a pretty big departure for Pixar. After all of the movies about toys, monsters, cars, bugs, and fish, we got a movie about a rat in a fancy Parisian restaurant -- not the normal stuff of childhood imaginations. If anyone could do well with that it's Pixar, and I think they did a pretty magical job given what they were working with. But my kids didn't laugh all that much, and while they seemed to enjoy it, they've never asked to see it again.
I have a hard time believing that someone could see Wall-E and not sympathize with or believe in his character, or any of the other characters in the show. I thought they did an excellent job of developing all of the major and minor characters. It felt to me like it was very easy to love the character of Wall-E, and to see what he was feeling and thinking, and to root for him the entire time.
But at the end of the day, everyone has their own opinions, and mine are often not the same as others around me, so that's cool.
Could someone please explain to me why Wall-E was a good movie?... the plot was rather cliched
Yeah, just one of the half-dozen "robot cleans up trash on abandoned earth and meets a probe robot who he falls in love with and follows her back into space and eventually leads all of mankind back to repopulate the earth" movies I watched last year.
Also, I like how you complain about the cliche, then say that it's not even a good cliche because it doesn't follow the cliche like you expected. Here's a news flash for you: 100% original movies that don't borrow from a previous story concept at all are incredibly rare, so if you see any movies at all, you're probably seeing cliches, judging by what your definition of cliche seems to be. And if Wall-E isn't borrowing concepts from any movie more recent than 1986, then I'd say it's doing better that 99.9% of Hollywood movies.
But the point of the movie wasn't so much the story... it's that it had a lot of heart, and that Wall-E himself was incredibly lovable. The scene where Eve thinks that Wall-E got blown up, then they dance around in space was pretty amazingly well done. Also, I took my kids to see it (ages 4 & 6 at the time), and they were absolutely enchanted by the whole movie, and laughed and giggled the whole time. Seeing movies with kids puts things in a whole new perspective.
I'm guessing you didn't read the part in TFA about how Cars has brought in $5 billion in merchandise. I think these Pixar folks watched SpaceBalls, and decided to make Cars 2: The Race for More Money.
I'm not complaining though. I didn't really care for Cars, but I think most of the rest of their movies are downright amazing. And Toy Story 2 was probably one of the best sequel movies ever, so I think they can do the sequel thing, as long as they keep the heart and soul that the original movies had.
I tried to reach TMo customer service using their "Live Chat" service this morning, and the first time I tried, I couldn't get through. Then I saw this story and wondered if it was related. But probably all the reps were getting donuts.
No, there is a difference. In the case of the pre, "apps" can be loaded and run from the phone. Once it's on the phone, you don't need to have connectivity to a web server to be able to run it. It uses a browser to render the app (just as it does for the native apps and everything you see on the screen), but it doesn't pull down the app as a web page running on a remote web server. If you're out in the boonies with no cell signal, you can still use a Pre app, assuming the app itself doesn't need to pull down data. That's an important difference.
Also, the Pre has an API for it's local apps to access local functionality.
I don't see why Apple would care too much if Palm did the same thing. More users of iTunes means more potential music buyers.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Apple makes more money off of iPhone/iPod sales than it makes from selling music (for the average customer). Not to mention the Pre has hooks into the Amazon music store, whereas the iPhone connects directly to the iTunes store, which means that even though the Pre will sync with iTunes, Pre owners still have a convenient option to buy elsewhere, so the Pre not only means zero revenue from the purchase of the phone, but most likely fewer iTunes tracks sold as well. The Blackberry, being primarily a business device, doesn't compete as directly with the iPhone as the Pre will.
Also, I think the biggest issue here is that the Pre masquerades as an iPod in iTunes. I'm assuming other 3rd party players show up as 3rd party players and not as iPods.
Sounds like they don't really want you to panic to me. Besides, this whole level 5 thing is about whether this is a pandemic, not whether it's super deadly. A pandemic just means it's "an epidemic of infectious disease that spreads through populations across a large region; for instance a continent, or even worldwide."
The way I understand it, the firing squad is an option. I seem to remember a couple of years ago, there were two separate death row inmates who were both opting for the firing squad instead of lethal injection. If the person condemned to death gets to choose the manner of execution and that's what they want, then I'd say you can't complain on grounds of cruel or unusual punishment. And as others have already mentioned, lethal injection has been pretty controversial lately due to the possibility of agonizing pain and a slow death. So I'm not sure why you think a firing squad is a bad idea.
Also, according to Wikipedia, the firing squad was banned in Utah in 2004, although inmates who were on death row before that still have the option. Firing Squad is still an option in Idaho and Oklahoma.
I think the tiered pricing doesn't go into effect until April-ish...
I also misread the slide from the keynote that gave me that idea. Apparently they were just talking about how up until now (for the last 6 years), songs have been 99 cents, and now they will be $.69, $.99, and $1.29, all at the discretion of the labels, although they have said that there will be more $.69 tracks than $1.29 tracks.
I didn't hear a lot of specifics on the pricing, but one of the slides from the liveblogs of the keynote made it look like any tracks over 6 years old would be 69 cents... Now I think that's pretty cool because a lot of the music I want is older than 6 years. I think it all works like this (but I could be wrong):
$1.29: Premium tracks (singles)
$0.99: Regular tracks less than 6 years old
$0.69: Older tracks
In my mind, that's a win for customers in general. All tracks go DRM-free, many stay the same price, and most go down in price, while a few newer songs go up in price.
Apparently not enough of you people making comments watch The Office, this was a direct quote from Michael Scott, as he was trying to demonstrate how racist everyone else was and how un-racist he was. (Season 3, episode 9: "The Convict")
Close your eyes. Picture a convict. What's he wearing? Nothing special, baseball cap on backwards, baggy pants... he says something ordinary like... 'yo, thats shizzle.' Okay. Now slowly open your eyes again. Who are you picturing? A black man? Wrong. That was a white woman. Surprised? Well, shame on you.
Or even better... consider the road conditions more carefully to begin with, and not put yourself in a situation where you wouldn't have enough room to stop with or without ABS?
Saying that without ABS, your tires would have penetrated the slush and grabbed the concrete is pretty speculative, and it's kind of a niche situation anyway. ABS may make things better or worse, but technology will have a hard time ever making everything absolutely safer... Better driving habits will do a lot more for you.
If you knew what the roads were like (slush), and what types of terrain you'd be driving on (hills), then you should have either found better alternate routes or given yourself more distance from the car in front of you... Own your accident, don't blame it on the tech!
I assume the basic service you're talking about is the "limited basic"... the one they don't advertise. The cost for standard basic is $1 less than the first digital package, and it's about 3 times the cost of limited basic.
Having any type of cable TV service reduces the Internet price from $55 to $45 (in my area anyway). That was useful to me, because we only have the limited basic analog TV package, which cost $13 (at the time I signed up... it has since gone up to ~$16).
So the cost for Internet w/o TV is $55, but the cost for Internet + limited basic TV is $58.
So it rounds out to paying $3/month ($6 now) for the convenience of not having to mount an antenna on my roof... plus we still get TVLand, Discovery and History in addition to a bunch of local networks.
Plus, every 3 months I call them and threaten to switch to a local wireless ISP in my area which would save me $15/month. 3 out of the last 4 times I've tried that, they've put me on a 3-month promotion for $20 off the cost of the Internet service.
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Mr. Incredible did the right thing at the beginning with Buddy, but he probably did not do it in the best way. He was busy, though, since he was catching a suicidal jumper, stopping a bank robbery and saving a passenger train and was late for his own wedding. He wasn't perfect, he paid a price for it, and he learned a lesson from it. It's all part of the story.
I think your comment mostly holds, but the Incredibles family is really not much (or really, any) more dysfunctional than any family today. A lot of what makes the show interesting and relatable is that, as a commenter above pointed out, the family members' powers are all based on real family stereotypes. They fight, they argue, they whine, they nag, they get bored and dissatisfied. The "dysfunction" is absolutely normal.
That said, The Incredibles is definitely in my top 3 Pixar movies, and a sequel would be much more natural than it would be for Monsters, Inc., or for Cars. Even if they skip the whole UnderMiner story line from the close of the first movie (or maybe especially if they skip it), they can build a very complex story about the continuing evolution of the family, with their roles in society and in their own home.
I actually disagree, to some extent. If you've seen the trailer for Toy Story 3 (admittedly I haven't seen it close up or on a big screen so I can't say much about the quality or level of detail), the style is very much the same as the previous two Toy Story movies, as it should be. Ratatouille had an incredibly beautiful style, but that was the Ratatouille style, and Toy Story shouldn't be done that way.
One of Pixar's greatest strengths is their ability to put you in a world and believe in that world. Doing Toy Story in the style of Ratatouille or Wall-E or Finding Nemo would break you out of the Toy Story world and would ruin the Toy Story experience. I can tell you right now my kids would much rather watch either of the Toy Story movies than Ratatouille... they're so much more relatable for children (and for me, actually, despite having lived in France for a couple of years). That's not to say that Ratatouille isn't a great movie though.
I have no doubt that Toy Story 3 will have higher-quality animation and artwork than the previous TS movies. That's expected, and it is pretty much a requirement. But if the difference changes the way you see the Toy Story world, then Pixar has failed to some degree... Unless TS3 takes place in a Parisian restaurant, of course.
Pixar will obviously come to the same conclusion. 3D (and real 3D) animation has just become just too expensive. Why? cause their employees think like IT: you need to constantly upgrade: cooler tools, faster computers, more editing, more realism, more challenges for the sake of keeping things fresh and innovative, like technology itself.
For one thing, the faster computers and the cooler tools can actually help the budget as they can cut development times down. For another thing, Pixar doesn't go always go for "more realism", at least not for the sake of realism, especially when human characters are in the picture. There were some scenes in Wall-E where it felt like you could have been looking at a photograph (mostly at the beginning), but when the humans got involved, they were all very cartoony, and intentionally so, because they were making a point and drawing a contrast between the first humans on the spaceship and what they had become.
Each of the Pixar movies has its own artistic style, and after the beautiful water scenes of Finding Nemo (which probably did cost a lot to make it as beautiful as it was), the Incredibles was very cartoony and the characters looked like action figures, instead of trying to make them look like real people. Ratatouille had a very realistic look, but with a charming, not really realistic glow that lifted the whole tone of the movie. Up had very cartoony characters, especially the main character. But the way they showed him grow up as a kid, a young man, middle aged, then elderly, you could see how he grew up into the little crotchety old scrunchy character he was, and you understood why he was lonely, and that he wasn't really the mean old man we could have otherwise mistaken him for.
Through all of it the artwork, especially the characters, was all a vital part of the story telling. The stories stand alone quite well, and they're mostly all very good stories. But the extra time and money was put into the artwork -- not to make shiny yet hollow experiences (as with most Disney releases of the past 10 years) -- but to enhance the tone of what are already very compelling stories.
Ratatouille was a good show with gorgeous animation and artwork, but I never really felt like it was that entertaining, especially for kids. There were no kids in the movie, and nothing that kids ever play with or dream about, which was a pretty big departure for Pixar. After all of the movies about toys, monsters, cars, bugs, and fish, we got a movie about a rat in a fancy Parisian restaurant -- not the normal stuff of childhood imaginations. If anyone could do well with that it's Pixar, and I think they did a pretty magical job given what they were working with. But my kids didn't laugh all that much, and while they seemed to enjoy it, they've never asked to see it again.
I have a hard time believing that someone could see Wall-E and not sympathize with or believe in his character, or any of the other characters in the show. I thought they did an excellent job of developing all of the major and minor characters. It felt to me like it was very easy to love the character of Wall-E, and to see what he was feeling and thinking, and to root for him the entire time.
But at the end of the day, everyone has their own opinions, and mine are often not the same as others around me, so that's cool.
Could someone please explain to me why Wall-E was a good movie? ... the plot was rather cliched
Yeah, just one of the half-dozen "robot cleans up trash on abandoned earth and meets a probe robot who he falls in love with and follows her back into space and eventually leads all of mankind back to repopulate the earth" movies I watched last year.
Also, I like how you complain about the cliche, then say that it's not even a good cliche because it doesn't follow the cliche like you expected. Here's a news flash for you: 100% original movies that don't borrow from a previous story concept at all are incredibly rare, so if you see any movies at all, you're probably seeing cliches, judging by what your definition of cliche seems to be. And if Wall-E isn't borrowing concepts from any movie more recent than 1986, then I'd say it's doing better that 99.9% of Hollywood movies.
But the point of the movie wasn't so much the story... it's that it had a lot of heart, and that Wall-E himself was incredibly lovable. The scene where Eve thinks that Wall-E got blown up, then they dance around in space was pretty amazingly well done. Also, I took my kids to see it (ages 4 & 6 at the time), and they were absolutely enchanted by the whole movie, and laughed and giggled the whole time. Seeing movies with kids puts things in a whole new perspective.
I'm guessing you didn't read the part in TFA about how Cars has brought in $5 billion in merchandise. I think these Pixar folks watched SpaceBalls, and decided to make Cars 2: The Race for More Money.
I'm not complaining though. I didn't really care for Cars, but I think most of the rest of their movies are downright amazing. And Toy Story 2 was probably one of the best sequel movies ever, so I think they can do the sequel thing, as long as they keep the heart and soul that the original movies had.
I tried to reach TMo customer service using their "Live Chat" service this morning, and the first time I tried, I couldn't get through. Then I saw this story and wondered if it was related. But probably all the reps were getting donuts.
No, there is a difference. In the case of the pre, "apps" can be loaded and run from the phone. Once it's on the phone, you don't need to have connectivity to a web server to be able to run it. It uses a browser to render the app (just as it does for the native apps and everything you see on the screen), but it doesn't pull down the app as a web page running on a remote web server. If you're out in the boonies with no cell signal, you can still use a Pre app, assuming the app itself doesn't need to pull down data. That's an important difference.
Also, the Pre has an API for it's local apps to access local functionality.
I don't see why Apple would care too much if Palm did the same thing. More users of iTunes means more potential music buyers.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Apple makes more money off of iPhone/iPod sales than it makes from selling music (for the average customer). Not to mention the Pre has hooks into the Amazon music store, whereas the iPhone connects directly to the iTunes store, which means that even though the Pre will sync with iTunes, Pre owners still have a convenient option to buy elsewhere, so the Pre not only means zero revenue from the purchase of the phone, but most likely fewer iTunes tracks sold as well. The Blackberry, being primarily a business device, doesn't compete as directly with the iPhone as the Pre will.
Also, I think the biggest issue here is that the Pre masquerades as an iPod in iTunes. I'm assuming other 3rd party players show up as 3rd party players and not as iPods.
Sounds like a job for Cosmo Kramer!
But you still have to get inside the building to do that, which was the previous poster's point.
I'm glad he set the record straight, because I know I Can't Explain it. Maybe it's a problem with My Generation.
Sounds like they don't really want you to panic to me. Besides, this whole level 5 thing is about whether this is a pandemic, not whether it's super deadly. A pandemic just means it's "an epidemic of infectious disease that spreads through populations across a large region; for instance a continent, or even worldwide."
Tell that to Dwight Schrute! He'll find out if you went to juvy!
The way I understand it, the firing squad is an option. I seem to remember a couple of years ago, there were two separate death row inmates who were both opting for the firing squad instead of lethal injection. If the person condemned to death gets to choose the manner of execution and that's what they want, then I'd say you can't complain on grounds of cruel or unusual punishment. And as others have already mentioned, lethal injection has been pretty controversial lately due to the possibility of agonizing pain and a slow death. So I'm not sure why you think a firing squad is a bad idea.
Also, according to Wikipedia, the firing squad was banned in Utah in 2004, although inmates who were on death row before that still have the option. Firing Squad is still an option in Idaho and Oklahoma.
I think the tiered pricing doesn't go into effect until April-ish...
I also misread the slide from the keynote that gave me that idea. Apparently they were just talking about how up until now (for the last 6 years), songs have been 99 cents, and now they will be $.69, $.99, and $1.29, all at the discretion of the labels, although they have said that there will be more $.69 tracks than $1.29 tracks.
I didn't hear a lot of specifics on the pricing, but one of the slides from the liveblogs of the keynote made it look like any tracks over 6 years old would be 69 cents... Now I think that's pretty cool because a lot of the music I want is older than 6 years. I think it all works like this (but I could be wrong):
$1.29: Premium tracks (singles)
$0.99: Regular tracks less than 6 years old
$0.69: Older tracks
In my mind, that's a win for customers in general. All tracks go DRM-free, many stay the same price, and most go down in price, while a few newer songs go up in price.
Apparently not enough of you people making comments watch The Office, this was a direct quote from Michael Scott, as he was trying to demonstrate how racist everyone else was and how un-racist he was. (Season 3, episode 9: "The Convict")
I hate having to explain jokes...
Close your eyes. Picture a convict. What's he wearing? Nothing special, baseball cap on backwards, baggy pants... he says something ordinary like... 'yo, thats shizzle.' Okay. Now slowly open your eyes again. Who are you picturing? A black man? Wrong. That was a white woman. Surprised? Well, shame on you.
--Michael Scott
Or even better... consider the road conditions more carefully to begin with, and not put yourself in a situation where you wouldn't have enough room to stop with or without ABS?
Saying that without ABS, your tires would have penetrated the slush and grabbed the concrete is pretty speculative, and it's kind of a niche situation anyway. ABS may make things better or worse, but technology will have a hard time ever making everything absolutely safer... Better driving habits will do a lot more for you.
If you knew what the roads were like (slush), and what types of terrain you'd be driving on (hills), then you should have either found better alternate routes or given yourself more distance from the car in front of you... Own your accident, don't blame it on the tech!
Volvo has an entire team dedicating to breaking systems?
Isn't that another description for a testing department/QA?
I prefer SlickRun myself... it's tiny and very fast.
I assume the basic service you're talking about is the "limited basic"... the one they don't advertise. The cost for standard basic is $1 less than the first digital package, and it's about 3 times the cost of limited basic. Having any type of cable TV service reduces the Internet price from $55 to $45 (in my area anyway). That was useful to me, because we only have the limited basic analog TV package, which cost $13 (at the time I signed up... it has since gone up to ~$16).
So the cost for Internet w/o TV is $55, but the cost for Internet + limited basic TV is $58.
So it rounds out to paying $3/month ($6 now) for the convenience of not having to mount an antenna on my roof... plus we still get TVLand, Discovery and History in addition to a bunch of local networks.
Plus, every 3 months I call them and threaten to switch to a local wireless ISP in my area which would save me $15/month. 3 out of the last 4 times I've tried that, they've put me on a 3-month promotion for $20 off the cost of the Internet service.
Did you grow up on an island?
If so, how are Locke and Sawyer doing since last season ended?